Centre for Internet and Society

What is Wikimedia Education SAARC Conference?

sailesh — 2019-06-22T09:37:23Z

The Wikimedia Education SAARC conference is on 20th June 2019. A conference for Wikimedians, Wikimedia education leaders, educators and researchers engaged with Open Education and free knowledge movement.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is the regional union of nations in South Asia. Wikimedians belonging to these nations share several common challenges and many of them are emerging communities within the Wikimedia movement. The community members to attend the Wikimedia Education SAARC conference are involved in Indic language Wikimedia projects.

Wikimedia Education SAARC conference will be the first of its kind conference in SAARC countries which will engage Wikimedians, education program leaders, educators and researchers engaged with Open Education and free knowledge movement. We believe that the students of all ages should not only consume the knowledge available on the Internet but also be a part of the larger Open Internet movement, and help in creating open knowledge resources.

The event will be organised in and by the Christ (Deemed to be University) in Bengaluru from 20th June 2019 to 22nd June 2019. CIS-A2K team has been working with the department of languages in this university from 2013, where students of the university are contributing to multiple Wikimedia projects. Our education activity at this university has inspired us to plan this event. To know more about this university, Please see here.

This conference will allow us to understand the different efforts made by the SAARC communities involved in the Wikimedia Education movement. This will help us to create models, templates and documents that can be replicated in by other institutions or programs.

Conference Goals:

To know the Wikimedia Education activities happening in South Asia by different community members/Languages.
Sharing the knowledge and best practices of how to build "trust relationship" with new partners/teachers and how to improve trust in Wikimedia projects.
Challenges on student retention and how to engage them in the broader Wikimedia movement.
The best method to evaluate and measure the quality of the work done by the students.
To introduce tools like the dashboard, not in your language, and other tools which will be useful for the tracking, assessment, allocation of the topics and others.

The program structure for Wikimedia Education SAARC conference has been developed by keeping the general and specific challenges and opportunities in South Asia, and the submission selected from the participants.

Follow the hashtag #EduWikiSAARC19 for more updates.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/what-is-wikimedia-education-saarc-conference-1

Christ University logo

sailesh — 2019-06-05T09:01:27Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/Christuniversitylogocolour.jpg

Wikimedia Education SAARC logo

sailesh — 2019-06-05T08:42:51Z

Wikimedia Education SAARC logo

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/copy_of_480pxWikipedia_Education_SAARC_Conference_Logo.png

Wikimedia Education SAARC logo

sailesh — 2019-06-05T08:32:13Z

Logo of Wikimedia Education SAARC

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/480pxWikipedia_Education_SAARC_Conference_Logo.png

The city of Bhubaneswar is going Open

sailesh — 2019-03-07T11:41:16Z

The Openness movement is a concept or philosophy that is characterized by an emphasis on transparency, free and unrestricted access to knowledge and information. The movement across the world is trying to build on the interest of like-minded people and an urgent need of bringing new resources of knowledge for the benefit of people with a method of collaborative or cooperative management. Many successful projects such as OpenStreetMap, Github, Wikimedia projects are free, open for everyone and evolve both by contributions and review efforts by participant volunteers. Open Knowledge Projects across the world are embarking upon a silent revolution to change the way information and knowledge are consumed by people.

Bhubaneswar supporting the concept of Openness movement has joined as one of the ambassadors of the movement in the world by giving citizens the right to access the content online produced by the government and make use of the work. As the city turned 70-year-old as the capital of Odisha in April 2018, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik launched two websites — Bhubaneswar.me and Smart City Bhubaneswar under a Creative Commons license. The websites were made to provide visitor or tourist information about the city and to showcase various projects being undertaken as a part of the Smart City mission.

A visual walk-through video was released for the visit.Bhubaneswar.me and Smart City website over social media sites for the public to understand the features of the websites which ended saying “Knowledge now made more accessible”, anyone can use the content and data of the website under the campaign for Transparency in Governance. These websites have adopted Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license also known as CC-BY-4.0, which allows the citizens of Bhubaneswar to use the work of the government. Creative Commons licenses are a set of open licenses that are used worldwide to enable widen use and reuse of creative work that is otherwise restricted by the strict copyright laws. Currently, the majority of government websites under the Bhubaneswar administration are under an Open license.

Transparency is considered the traditional hallmark of an open government, meaning that the public should have access to government-held information and be informed of government proceedings, says an article from Opensource.com. Transparency, accountability, and participation are one of the needed conditions for the government to ensure that public resources are used efficiently, public policies are designed in the best interest of the population.

Though most of the government websites can be accessed online, the content of those sites are not open by default, the government has to adopt a specific license to open their content. In September 2017, Odisha became the first state in India to release all of its social media contents under a free license such as Creative Commons license, initially eight social media accounts of the state government were part of the project and followed by few other departments under the state government releasing their content under the same license. Because of this initiative by the government, currently, ten or more websites and eight social media accounts are allowing people from all around the world to freely reuse the state government’s work.

As the content of the websites is under a free license it creates an impact on a project like Wikipedia-one of the most popular websites in the world and the largest online encyclopedia available on the internet, committed to free and open copyright licenses from its earliest days on the internet. Currently, a near about files from the websites and social media accounts of the Government of Odisha are added into Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia’s sister site and an open multimedia repository, under a content donation program of which 70% of files are used in different Wikipedia articles, all of which together has received over 25 million page views in last 18 months.

Cities opening their data and content for the citizens encourages individuals for new innovation and to form new ideas that help to bridge the gap in the city. A report from Forbes in 2012 says Open city data can help app developers, urban planners, and others understand a city’s problems and manage city services in ways that improve the quality of life and business prospects for its residents. When Bhubaneswar led the way of promoting the Openness movement in India, there is a huge scope for the rest of the cities to adopt open licensing to make knowledge more accessible for the citizens and enhance public trust in government.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-city-of-bhubaneswar-is-going-open

Wide image Mukteswar temple

sailesh — 2019-03-07T11:26:40Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/Access_Bhubaneswar.jpg

Train the Trainer program 2018

sailesh — 2019-03-06T08:13:05Z

Trainer the Trainer program is an annual three days residential program organised by the Access to Knowledge Program of Centre for Internet and Society. The program identifies the community leaders and brings Wikimedians from and around the SAARC countries to train them and provide mentorship in their work.

Train the Trainer 2018 was the 5th iteration of the Train the Trainer Program by the CIS-A2K. This year TTT was organised in the city of Mysore. The event was attended by 21 Wikimedians throughout the Indic language communities, including three foreign delegates from Bangladesh and Nepal. Like previous years, this year, TTT followed the pre-event session with ice breaker activities, which helped the Wikimedians to know each other, and interact with the fellow participants.

The day one of TTT 2018 began with a small round of formal introductions for participants who joined later, the idea of the introduction session was for the participants to share their area expertise and projects they are working on. We have always identified that during the free time participants interact with each other and talk about collaboration activities, so this session helps to know more about your fellow participants. We had a Master Class (Master Class 1) about the Pre and Post event best practices, for the participants to understand how to plan an an event and what should be the preworks before organising an event, we also had sessions on best practices for community members to write and review grant proposals and an introductory session on Wikidata.

The day two was a field trip (Master Class 2) to Sri Chamarajendra Zoological Gardens, a local zoo in Mysore. The intent of the field trip was to give exposure to the participants to learn in an open environment. Followed by the field trip, a session on Diversity initiatives was conducted to understand the challenges and opportunities of having a diverse community.

On the day three, the participants were introduced to a variety of Wikimedia events (Master Class 3) and a panel discussion by Wikimedia affiliates from India (WMF, Chapter, User-group and CIS-A2K) about the organisational structure and responsibilities. The aim of the panel was to help the participants to understand the structure of Wikimedia affiliates in Inda, to share the different kind of events and collaborations they can do with the affiliates. This year CIS-A2K introduced Revolving cafe for the participants to attend some parallel sessions related to Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Institutional Partnership, Support and Safety. The day was concluded with a lightning talk on Social media best practices, how affiliates and community member should use social media channels to promote their work. Subsequently, there was feedback and summing up session.

This year CIS-A2K made a few changes to the Train the Trainer program, for the first time the event was held out of Bangalore. We had invited a longtime Punjabi Wikimedian, a previous alumnus of TTT to externally audit the TTT 2018 being part of the team. Dr Manavpreet Kaur has provided a 10 points suggestion/feedback to the team which will be addressed in TTT 2019.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/train-the-trainer-program-2018

Group photo of TTT 2018

sailesh — 2019-03-06T06:33:49Z

TTT 2018 participants during the Day-2 field trip. Image by BHARATHESHA ALASANDEMAJALU under CC-BY-SA 3.0

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/copy_of_800pxGroup_pic_at_Mysore_Zoo__TTT2018_Day_02_1.jpg

Group photo of TTT 2018

sailesh — 2019-03-06T06:33:47Z

TTT 2018 participants during the Day-2 field trip. Image by BHARATHESHA ALASANDEMAJALU under CC-BY-SA 3.0

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/800pxGroup_pic_at_Mysore_Zoo__TTT2018_Day_02_1.jpg

CIS Signs MoU with Odia Virtual Academy

sailesh — 2018-12-20T00:24:44Z

On October 26, 2018, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Odia Virtual Academy (OVA) to work on drafting an open content policy for the state, to promote use of Wikimedia projects by various user types and to ensure sustainability of Wikimedia projects, and to facilitate development of relevant free and open source software projects. This partnership between OVA and CIS will be carried out from December 2018 to November 2019, and we are sharing an overview of the activities and their objectives in this post.

The internet is increasingly significant as a knowledge repository today. Especially relevant in this context is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which contains information on almost every topic under the sun, across many languages spoken globally, and is used extensively all people to seek information and produce knowledge.

From past one year (since July 2017), The Government of Odisha has been actively participating in the open knowledge movement by publishing the content of their seven websites and eight social media accounts under Creative Commons 4.0 International license. This active collaboration with Government of Odisha and an active Odia Wikimedia community seeking to create and distribute knowledge in Odia language over the internet has resulted in improving 1,200 articles on different Wikimedia projects, and together has received a near about 16 Million page views. Further, the Government of Odisha adopting an open content policy will provide a significant boost in institutionalising creation, sharing, and re-use of open knowledge resources - including government documents, official statistics, open educational resources, and open cultural resources - in Odia language.

Odia Virtual Academy (OVA) is an organisation established by Government of Odisha for development, promotion and popularization of Odia language, literature, and lexicography for general use. It is an organised initiative to encourage expeditious evolution and popularisation of Odia books, magazines, journals, old songs, manuscripts, assembly speeches, and archival records by digitising and providing internet based resources and opportunities for all odia people living across the globe.

On October 26, 2018, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) signed a MoU with the Odia Virtual Academy to work on drafting an open content policy for the state, to promote use of Wikimedia projects by various user types and to ensure sustainability of Wikimedia projects, and to facilitate development of relevant free and open source software projects.

This partnership between OVA and CIS will be carried out from December 2018 to November 2019, and its activities are structured by the following objectives:

Open Content Policy for the Government of Odisha: The open content policy will include guidelines for the use of open licenses and open standards to enable the resource (text, resources or otherwise) publishing entity to share resources in a manner that it can be easily and freely be accessed, shared, and re-used by entities, without asking for prior permission, while ensuring that full attribution to the creator/publisher is provided and the resources are not misused, or the creator/publisher is not misrepresented in the process.
Developing Digital and Open Knowledge Resources in Odia Language: The CIS team will undertake awareness-building, training, and outreach activities to develop Odia language content on Wikimedia ecosystem, as well as to enable content creators from across institutions, with a focus on state government officials at district headquarters and college students. The broad mandate of the digital resource generation workshop is to introduce teachers, students, and interested citizens to tools of collaborative knowledge production on the internet and methods for generating new online content or reintroduce offline content in Odia language.
‘Revive Odia’ Activities: Odia as a language has a long tradition and has been medium of expression for the native speakers of Odisha. While Odia as a language of communication is not under any immediate threat, its role and responsibility as a language of Knowledge needs to be examined carefully. ‘Revive Odia’ activities have a simple objective: To bring Odia under limelight in the digital domain. Wikimedia projects in Odia language are working actively to increase the presence of Odia language on the Internet. If such projects can be supported new projects can be incubated, Odia will emerge as the language of knowledge production and distribution as well.
GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) Partnerships: Wikimedia ecosystem offer several platforms for using the power and opportunities of internet to (digitally) preserve, enable access to, and creative re-use of historical, cultural, and social artefacts, and channel the expertise of local populations to build narratives around these artefacts. The CIS team is particularly interested in initiating engagement with public GLAM institutions at various locations and levels, and work with academic and research community to build scientific metadata of these objects. The metadata will be used to represent the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Odisha in projects such as Wikidata.
Building and Supporting FOSS for Odia Language: To promote and enable usage of Odia language on the web, the CIS team will facilitate development of an Odia font, an input tool, and a spell-check dictionary - all of which will be released as FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) resources.

To undertake these activities, CIS will receive a grant of Rs 20,00,000 (~$28,000) from OVA.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-signs-mou-with-odia-virtual-academy

ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಮುದಾಯದ ಪರವಾಗಿ ನಾನು ಮತ್ತು ಮಲ್ಲಿಕಾರ್ಜುನ್

sailesh — 2018-07-04T16:38:13Z

ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಮುದಾಯದ ಪರವಾಗಿ ನಾನು ಮತ್ತು ಮಲ್ಲಿಕಾರ್ಜುನ್

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/IMG20180703WA0015.jpg

WikiTungi: Bhubaneswar City Wiki Community Turns 1

sailesh — 2017-02-27T01:42:11Z

The Odia Wikipedia’s WikiTungi is an attempt at building a community of Wikimedians at the city level.

The tungi, named after an ancient practice in Odia that involves passing on knowledge of the scriptures, is a city based Wikipedia community that helps Wikimedians around the city to meet and learn from their shared experiences. The Tungi meetups and events are organised with the help of the volunteers.

The Odia community's WikiTungi is based out of two cities, Puri and Bhubaneswar. While Wikimedians in Puri conduct meetups bi-monthly, Bhubaneswar Wikimedians meet once a month. In every meetup, Wikimedians exchange their resources with each other, helping address their doubts and queries regarding their problems and projects.

This February marks the first anniversary of the Bhubaneswar WikiTungi. The WikiTungi members from the city meet every second Sunday of the month. To commemorate the first anniversary of this novel effort, nine community members from the Bhubaneswar Tungi met for a celebratory dinner at a local restaurant on 9 February 2017 and toasted to the dedication of the volunteers.

The community discussed various ideas (listed below) and the ways in which they can be implemented in the regular WikiTungi meetups. Members of the community also showed their interest in organising the third edition of WikiConference India in Bhubaneswar to bring Wikipedia to more people across the state of Odisha. During the community meetup, Tungi members came up with few ideas to implement it as a best practice in the Wikipedia movement.

Some of them are listed here:

The Tungi members will invite one of the global community leaders for a Skype or hangout session.
Discuss the best practice from the global community and discuss them with the community.
Updating the minutes of the meeting and sharing them with the other community members.
Updating the Learning and Evaluation team about the new learning of the community every month.
The community will also send postcards as a souvenirs to the participants of the global community for the online sessions.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikitungi-bhubaneswar-city-wiki-community-turns-1